Pittsburgh's Orgone Archive has in its collection over six hours of 16mm footage dating from 1933 to 1980 shot by the late amateur filmmaker / photographer Fred McLeod of Oakmont, Pennsylvania. McLeod is known by railroad buffs for his sync sound train films that were available from Blackhawk Films during the 1950's and '60's. Some titles such as Steam and Diesel on the Bessemer and Lake Erie and The Thunder of Steam in the Blue Ridge are still available on various railroad videotape compilations. This film, excerpted from one of two 400' reels in the archive entitled "All Personal Sound Movies," shows off McLeod's distinctive non-locomotive side. It was shot using his Auricon Cine Voice sound-on-film camera which enabled him to create a sync optical soundtrack directly on the film while shooting. This Christmas footage was filmed in 1962 at his mother's Oakmont house and features Fred, his mother, sister and brother-in-law, the family cat and a silver microphone.

Also available on the DVD "Living Room Cinema: Films From Home Movie Day, Vol. I"


This movie is part of the collection: Home Movies

Producer: Fred McLeod
Audio/Visual: sound, color
Keywords: home movie

Creative Commons license: Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0

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Reviewer: RoboReview - - July 30, 2010
Subject: Oscar bait for sure
I love this. The guy lugs a heavy, expensive audio-video rig to his family Christmas to capture the most banal activities imaginable, right down to the boys choir on B&W TV kicking out the jams on "Little Drummer Boy.". Judging by the color saturation, our auteur must also have had to set up some sort of studio fill-light stuff as well, but instead of his relatives being annoyed, they just keep smiling and babbling like theyre on their third glass of whatever. With all that gear he coulda written them a script; good thing he didnt! Love the brother-in-law at the end staring placidly into the lens until he grabs the big chrome mike to call for a commercial break. I'd rather watch two hours of this than 5 minutes of Transformers.

Reviewer: Spuzz - - July 29, 2008
Subject: Yes!!!
This was all too amazing. A guy with a camera and a microphone presents us with his relatives. The color on this film is amazing, and so are the people. Love the grandmother type! The "Little Drummer Boy" on the tv is a nice surreal touch. More like this!!